Most Useful Augmented Reality Apps 2017

Wikitude has now expanded and is much more than just a location-based browsing platform. It now features recognition and augmented print to deliver a comprehensive augmented reality experience. To use it, users just need to type in a search term, for instance “pizza restaurants”, then simply raise up the phone’s camera and look around. A digital overlay will show any matches to your search!

This app is great for all people, specially travellers in a new country who need to find out new locations. AR has made wikitude a platform like no other and you can think of it as  mix of several helpful websites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, Twitter, etc. 

Users can also select specific categories like restaurants, historic locations, upcoming events and many others to make searching more streamlined with their advanced algorithm and contextually aware search. You can also make print ads and packaging come to life with its heightened digital content like animations, videos and links by providing consumers with rich media overlays to create a compelling end user experience!

Great for interior enthusiasts, Snapshop allows users to visualize how any piece of furniture can look in your room. It makes use of the smartphone’s camera and photo roll to show overlays of different kinds of furniture from various leading brands like IKEA, Crate & Barrel, Pier 1 and many more. 

This app can be a godsend if you are in the middle of re-doing your home, and instead of leaving the decore of your surroundings to shop keepers, you can now easily plan and adjust the space according to your tastes! Not only will it give you a better idea of how to do up a room, it will also save you a lot of time and energy when it comes to picking out the furniture. What if you choose a sofa that just doesn't match your home or is too bulky for the living room? Imagine having to send it back. With Snapshop you never have to worry about these things again!

You can have a look at the products and even view the dimensions, and also have the options for color variants and more viewing tools. You can easily save these previews for reference, or simply go the brand’s website to make your purchase!

iOnRoad Augmented Driving is an app created to help drivers on the road by offering collision cautions, forewarns and other such important data. With the high number of vehicles on the roads these days, it has become imperative to be cautious of your surrounding and drive carefully. Many times accidents are caused not by use, but other driviers around us. This is where this AR application can help immensely. 

The app features a "Visual Radar" that makes use of the smartphone's sensors and camera to track the speed and distance of the cars around and in front of yours. It also gives audio and visual accident warnings, as well as speeding alerts, even if another app is open on the screen.

The app can also record your whole drive, and even take geotagged photographs, which provide driving analytics. Though, users will need to attach and sturdy mount on their windscreen that will allow a clear recording path for the forward camera.

Blipper’s tagline states “fuel your curiosity” and that is exactly what this free iOS and Android AR app aims to do! It works like an AR scanner for anything and everything around you and lets you scan in order to provide a plethora of useful information. The action of scanning things around you is called “blipping,” and the Blippar team hopes that the term “blip” picks up. Users can blip anything around them be it an object, a book, an advertisement, or even a fruit.

Wondering what sort of information will be thrown your way? It depends on the thing that you are scanning, but generally you can expect to get interesting facts, new media, games, interactive content, and anything that can be used on a smartphone!

Using Blipper offers a lot of potential for educational uses, as users can simply scan things and find out a plethora of information about it, that too without having to even search for the term online – everything is available at the press of a button (actually the press of an app!). Marketing too can benefit from it and a huge number of big brands are already working with this AR app, including Coca Cola, Cracker Jack and Unilever.

As the Blippar community is getting bigger and bigger, more blippable things will eventually be added and then almost all of our surroundings can become blippable!

Whenever you go to visit monuments, museums or historical sites, it is always helpful to have a tourist guide helping you out and giving you information about the location you are in. Without this, it feels a little off and like you are missing a big part of your tour.

While it may not always be possible to have someone with you at all times to give you this handy information, it is possible to have this useful data on you at all times! The Field Trip AR app delivers fascinating details about the history of the location and monuments around you and gives you all the information you need.

It is a location-aware augmented reality app that lets you select from a number of location categories like historical landmarks, museums or even just nearby places to visit or eat at, and then gives a notification with a pop-up card about whether they're near that location, as well as information about that place. Users also have the option to view locations on the app’s map and tag them as favorites so that they can be visited later. 

The knowledge of constellations and the mystery of stars has always been a topic of fascination for most people, especially stargazers. But the tough calculations and angles can make it a little bit difficult to find what you are looking for in the sky. This is where the AR app Star Walk comes into place.

If you want to understand the shapes and patterns that you see in the sky, then this application can tell you exactly what you are looking at. To use it, all you have to do is point the smartphone’s camera at the sky, and the app will then provide the user with information about the constellations, planets and other celestial bodies in your field of view.

If you want to find a particular constellation or star, the app will tell you when and how you can. Users can also tap on the planets and stars to receive more information about them. There’s even a Time Machine feature that lets you see the starscape at a past or future date, as well as a Night Mode that lets you stargaze at nighttime.

The app can sync with social media to let you easily share your new findings with friends and family and the app also makes a great education tool for people!